April 30: George Washington becomes the first President of the United States (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

From the Heritage Foundation

Thanksgiving Proclamation

Issued by President George Washington, at the request of Congress, on October 3, 1789

By the President of the United States of America, a Proclamation.

Whereas it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favor; and—Whereas both Houses of Congress have, by their joint committee, requested me “to recommend to the people of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer, to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many and signal favors of Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness:”

Now, therefore, I do recommend and assign Thursday, the 26th day of November next, to be devoted by the people of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being who is the beneficent author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be; that we may then all unite in rendering unto Him our sincere and humble thanks for His kind care and protection of the people of this country previous to their becoming a nation; for the signal and manifold mercies and the favor, able interpositions of His providence in the course and conclusion of the late war; for the great degree of tranquillity, union, and plenty which we have since enjoyed; for the peaceable and rational manner in which we have been enabled to establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national one now lately instituted; for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed, and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge; and, in general, for all the great and various favors which He has been pleased to confer upon us.

And also that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations, and beseech Him to pardon our national and other trangressions; to enable us all, whether in public or private stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually; to render our National Government a blessing to all the people by constantly being a Government of wise, just, and constitutional laws, discreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed; to protect and guide all sovereigns and nations (especially such as have shown kindness to us), and to bless them with good governments, peace, and concord; to promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the increase of science among them and us; and, generally, to grant unto all mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as He alone knows to be best.

Given under my hand at the City of New York the third day of October in the year of our Lord 1789.

I have never in all my life been able to understand why people would oppose nuclear power plants. It’s just another way to make steam. Do you have to be careful? Sure. But so what, you don’t need trains full of coal every day either, or natural gas which has better uses.

You know, ever since the USS Nautilus was commissioned on 30 September 1954, major combatant ships of the United States Navy have been nuclear powered. They have compiled a record of nearly 58 years of operations without a reactor problem. Do we really think civilians can’t handle safety concerns as well as the military? After all, nuclear stations are not running around the oceans 200 feet under water.

Do we need to make sure safety rules are followed? Sure, but that’s true with anything in heavy industry, it can all kill you quick. One thing that I have noticed, in my field, is that even little things matter. For instance those little colored crimp connectors that you see in electrical/electronics (on the back of switches and such). They come in four grades, 1: commercial, 2: Industrial, 3: Military, and 4: Nuclear. In most of my work, I use commercial, in the larger sizes there is a mark and serial number that identifies the die set used to make the connection and assure the inspector that it is properly made, if it’s not there, the job will be red tagged until it is fixed. Think about how much higher the nuclear spec might be is!

Do you ever wonder whether what we do matters? Maybe only the big blogs, you know the Big Hollywood‘s, RedState, I Own the World, Drudge, and others maybe they are the only one that matter. Well they’re not, what I say and you say can shape the dialogue more than we can know.

Yesterday, I wrote a short post that included some information about Abound Energy in Colorado. If you missed it here’s the link. I sourced from Colorado Peak Politics but others wrote about it also. One of them was Complete Colorado Blog. Their post definitely got noticed. Today they posted some inside baseball for our edification. It’s short so I’ll just repost it so you all can see what can happen.

By taking a closer look we can discern a few extra things. First, because we see two separate screen sizes, we know there were more than two people checking out the story. Next, there’s no referring link, which means they didn’t just stumble upon the story from some source, like CompleteColorado, or the Daily Caller (we wish) or the Drudge Report (we wish) or The Blaze (we wish) or The Heritage Foundation (we wish)…you get the idea.

At any rate, we’re happy to have members of the White House stop by…Pretty sure we’ll be seeing you again soon!

This is from Benjamin Domenich’s: The Transom. It’s remarks by Governor Daniel’s on Obamacare. I haven’t seen it elsewhere and as always, he makes a lot of sense (and quotes Calvin Coolidge).

REMARKS TO INDIANAPOLIS:

At the invitation of the AARP and the Indiana Healthcare Implementation Working Group, I gave the following remarks to an Indianapolis audience of about 300 people yesterday, mostly including legislators, staff, and other interested stakeholders. Thanks to Mike Cannon and Jack McHugh for their help on a few points. I was the lone voice in a series of panels against the implementation of a health insurance exchange under Obamacare. It stirred the pot in the room a bit, which I liked. It also fulfills my personal goal of quoting Calvin Coolidge in every speech I give.

There are five chief reasons why I would counsel Indiana to choose to delay the implementation of an exchange under President Obama’s health care law.

The health care law’s status is in significant doubt.As you know, the crux of the law – its individual mandate – is currently pending review by the U.S. Supreme Court thanks to a lawsuit brought by 28 states (including Indiana). The law is supported by only 38% of Americans according to the latest poll data, and its individual mandate is opposed by 80%. Whatever the court rules, the impetus is there for major political changes to the law. This legislation is going to be reopened within the next Congress – either by Democrats seeking to correct its many flaws, or by Republicans seeking to undo the whole thing and replace it with something new.

The creation of a federal exchange is a hollow threat.A number of critical problems exist with HHS implementing a federal exchange. For one, there is no funding authorized in the law for federal exchanges – HHS would have to find the money elsewhere and likely will have to appeal to Congress as the cost rises and more states choose not to implement. Even more significantly, due to a drafting error, Section 1401 provides only for subsidies “through an Exchange established by the State under Section 1311.” This mistake means that the law does not authorize access to those subsidies – the chief reason for individuals to find the exchange appealing – under any theoretical federal exchange. Fixing problems like this, again, would require reopening debate on the law itself – a recipe for a major political clash in Washington.

Indiana would have little control. Even those who supported and advocated for the exchange concept in Massachusetts and Utah have turned against the idea now that the rules and requirements have begun to emerge from Washington. The Heritage Foundation’s Ed Haislmaier wrote after initial regulations were released that “a state would now have no more real control over an exchange it set up than over one HHS established.” As the details come into focus, it appears Obama’s exchanges function more as delivery mechanisms for bureaucratic regulations and costly subsidies, and that a state level exchange is really just about the letterhead. As Louisiana’s health secretary Bruce Greenstein explained when they opted against implementation: “If we were to run it, it’d have the governor’s name on top of the letterhead for every letter to businesses and families announcing the increase in premiums.”

The exchanges are in significant flux.Richard Burkhauser at Cornell recently discovered the exchange subsidy costs were calculated based only on the affordability of individual coverage, not family plans. This means families aren’t eligible for subsidies as long as the breadwinner’s plan is affordable. This is a huge problem. If the law really does mean single coverage, you’re going to have several million people who aren’t going to get coverage they were expecting. If the opposite is true, then the exchanges are likely to cost as much as $50 billion to taxpayers each year beyond initial estimates. Employees may end up begging employers to make their coverage unaffordable, so their families can gain access to thousands of dollars in taxpayer funded subsidies in the exchanges. Either way, Congress is likely to be forced to address this issue – a fact complicated by the unique historical way it was passed.

Time is running out. Implementing an exchange is likely to be delayed even for those states pushing forward with the idea. Just consider the sheer amount of tasks still left – including running a reinsurance and risk-adjustment program, funding and monitoring the “navigators” required to help citizens navigate the exchange, defining and monitoring network adequacy and anti-discrimination provisions, and forming plans on how you will fund the exchange starting in 2015. If you would like an example of how other states have done this, Oregon chose a premium tax of up to 5 percent. And that’s just the state level! You have to report on all of these steps to Washington and get the necessary approvals – and given how delayed the process has been at HHS, with lengthy rules which take up a lot of pages but raise more questions than answers, I question if it’s even possible to launch an exchange on time if you wanted to.

Industry and providers are increasingly expecting changes, and so should you. I have laid out pragmatic reasons why you should avoid implementation. I believe you may find that at the end of the day, you will have spent the taxpayer’s dime to implement a law that no longer exists, or is significantly reformed. Voters tend to dislike seeing their money wasted. But there is a moral argument here as well. You swore an oath to the Constitutions of Indiana and the United States, an oath that should give you pause if you decide to implement a law which may very well be found shortly to be in violation of that Constitution, or spend one dollar earned by the labor of another toward such a project, at a time when every dollar is needed. As Calvin Coolidge put it: “I’ve noticed that nothing I’ve never said has hurt me.” I maintain you have nothing to fear from an Obama exchange you’ve never built.

Personally, while not as big a fan of Daniels as some, he is, as always, a voice of reason, and he’s right, too.

A Reminder of Our Heritage

It is often asserted that the world has made a great deal of progress since 1776, that we have had new thoughts and new experiences which have given us a great advance over the people of that day, and that we may therefore very well discard their conclusions for something more modern.

But that reasoning cannot be applied to this great charter. If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final. No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions. If anyone wishes to deny their truth or their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward toward the time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people.

Those who wish to proceed in that direction can not lay claim to progress. They are reactionary. Their ideas are not more modern, but more ancient, than those of the Revolutionary fathers.